Day 30 - The End, Finally

Your Average Per Day

5,021

Words Written Today

7,057

Target Word Count

50,000

Total Words Written

150,645

Words Remaining

0

Current Day

30

Local Writer Breaks Personal Record with Aplomb

A local writer, entering her eighth consecutive National Novel Writing Month challenge with an entry into this month’s Camp NaNoWriMo (www.campnanowrimo.org), shattered her personal writing record by a wide margin.

The local woman, who recently found herself unemployed, spent the month of April writing over one hundred fifty thousand words. No, that was not a typo; over 150,000 words, all written in the span of thirty days. Just as a reference, one hundred fifty thousand words in a Microsoft Word document with standard spacing is the equivalent of approximately three hundred thirty (330) pages. That is quite a bit of writing for a single month!

When asked what the topic of all this frenetic writing was, she replied that it had started out as a life experiment in language learning and writing.

She explained, “After several unfruitful months of looking for work, Camp NaNoWriMo, which I would have normally entered anyway, provided me with a creative outlet for my frustration and a worthwhile goal at the same time. I entered the writing event with the standard goal of completing a fifty thousand word document within the thirty days of April. But based upon my personal interests and in the spirit of increasing my attractiveness to potential employers, I added a twist. This month my challenge was to write those fifty thousand words in a blog and teach myself Spanish at the same time.”

“If this all seems like too much, it was. But not for the reasons that you might think. First off, I was starting a brand new blog on WordPress and I had never used this writing platform before. I simply started too late to understand how to use it fully enough for my purposes. That was my first mistake,” she continued.

“My next mistake was that of one big technical problem; my language learning materials, all previously ripped to my computer, were simply gone. My desktop computer had refused to unlock sometime late last year after a power outage had shut it down (it was protected by a surge protector though) and I didn’t have the money to get it fixed. I thought I was still alright anyway because I had all of my iTunes saved to an external hard drive. Wrong again.”

“When I hooked up the external hard drive to my netbook, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I opened up “My Computer” but it didn’t even register that the hard drive was there. I turned the computer off and restarted it again but there was nothing. All of my previously ripped material—some of which I can no longer find after my most recent move—was gone, completely vanished. My Spanish project was not exactly doomed, but it was off to a rocky start.”

The author then goes on to explain that she found some older cassette programs and started working with those but not at the pace she had intended.

“Between the starting difficulties I was having with learning how to use WordPress effectively and my missing language materials, I just threw myself into my writing even more. My continuing job search was stalled and while I was initially still studying a little Spanish, as the month progressed I eventually stopped that too. By the time mid-month rolled around I was determined to complete my first ever one hundred thousand word month in a National Novel Writing Month event,” she explained.

“I can go back to the Spanish next month; this month I reduced my goals from finding decent work and writing fifty thousand words about my Spanish studies to simply finding a decent job and writing one hundred thousand words period,” she continued.

So how is that job search going for you?

“It’s not. I’m sad to say that it seems as if most of corporate America, or at least many of its’ representatives here in what I believe is being called the “rust belt” now, have bought into the Wal-Mart plan. By that I mean that if you are willing to work part-time for minimum wage, jobs are easy to get; you can sign up for welfare to get your groceries paid for and your medical coverage too. But if you want full-time employment with benefits and you want to—even expect to—do rewarding work that is also challenging and earn a decent wage at the same time, you are out of luck.”

“Don’t get me wrong; I know that there are still really good—even excellent—companies and jobs in America. Not all companies operate in this manner,” the author continued. “The internet is a double-edged sword. Now I can and do receive e-mail notifications from multiple sources every single day with supposed job opportunities for me. Many of these jobs are so out in left field that it is ridiculous and many are not even real job opportunities at all. Still more are offers for things that I either cannot do or I am not interested in doing.  I constantly receive “job opportunities” for the military, truck driving and even advanced medical careers—as in, I need to already be a registered nurse or a medical doctor to get them. It’s crazy. And while it’s nice to have e-mail assisting me with my job search, the internet is also forcing potential employees to all look exceptional on paper. What if you don’t look exceptional on paper but you really are exceptional? I’ve always gotten jobs when the employer had the opportunity to meet with me one-on-one; the internet simply screens out applicants who do not meet a certain criteria. I don’t even get calls.”

Why do you suppose that is?

“One of the biggest reasons that employers aren’t calling is that they never see my application. If they aren’t hiring full-time I’m not interested to start with. If they are paying minimum wage I’m also not interested. I have expensive student loans to pay; how is that supposed to happen when I can barely afford my utility bills as it is? I would not have taken out those loans if I had known that I wasn’t going to be able to repay them.”

“The second reason that employers don’t see my application is that when they insist that you put a ‘real’ number in the amount you expect to earn for the job, I do. I put a number in that will allow me to survive, if not necessarily thrive, as an employee. I know I will be worth it. The truth is that by simply comparing that portion alone, employers will never call excellent job candidates because they are not willing to invest in good people. And that right there is a symptom of a much larger problem in America today.”

What is that?

“Many companies, despite what they say, seem to have forgotten what it really important. People are important; if you have the right people, you can go to the moon, just as we proved back in the sixties. With the wrong people, well, pick your catastrophe and that’s what happens. The real trouble is that while we all have tremendous potential to achieve excellence within our lives, many people don’t care about actually doing the work it takes to be excellent. Many people only want to appear as if they are excellent and plenty of those same people do look great on paper; they just don’t have what it really takes to do more than strike the proper pose.”

“One final problem with this whole “internet as pre-screener” process is this; I have been forced—and by that I mean you cannot leave it blank or they won’t accept your application—repeatedly  to complete questions that involve my age and as many of my colleagues are finding out, ageism is on the rise in America. It is and has been for a very long time illegal to ask any questions that can tell an employer your age. This includes actual date of birth and date of graduation from high school. I have found some form of these questions on almost every application that I’ve either filled out or looked at online now. This is a problem for many of the chronically unemployed in America today,” the author concluded.

What has happened to your Spanish studies?

“My Spanish studies are temporarily on hiatus; I will probably start them up again either later this coming month or in June, albeit it at a much slower pace than I had originally anticipated for this month’s project. I do know that  I want to be more careful when I structure it this time and I want to be sure that all of the pieces are in place first when I do continue. As I free up time from other responsibilities I will ramp up my study time again; I have a raft of other self-improvement projects on the back burner too and that is just one item on a very long list.”

What’s next on that long list of things you plan to do?

“Despite my many successes at completing a National Novel Writing Month event by writing at least fifty thousand words in thirty days, I have only written one complete novel so far. Everything else has fallen apart during the course of the writing. I still write enough, it just hasn’t been enough of what I planned to write; there have been many false starts during the process.”

“As for my first novel, unfortunately I have never gotten around to editing it yet and it is a really rough draft. I want to finally edit that novel and then I am going to teach myself how to self-publish via Amazon’s KDP—that stands for Kindle Direct Publishing—and initially publish it in e-book format. I would also like to publish it in paperback after I finish publishing the e-book version.”

So what will happen to your blog after this month? Are you going to continue writing?

“Absolutely; I love to write. If nothing else this month—especially the end-of-the-month push that I just completed—has shown me without question that I love writing above almost anything else. My blog is designed around the entire concept of self-directed learning. Spanish—and language learning in general—are but one facet of the many interests that I have. I have every intention of continuing my blog and, as I have done my whole life, continuing my journey of self-improvement via self-directed learning. Please feel free to follow my blog if you’re interested in watching my progress.”

It seems like you have plans that will keep you busy for a very long time—good luck!